


The Long Arc of History

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Series: Many Little AUs for the Purpose of Exploding the Lilshotgun Tag [4]
Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: AU, Civil Rights Movement, F/F, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26253661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: Mary and Lilith are civil rights activist in Georgia in the 60s
Relationships: Sister Lilith/Shotgun Mary (Warrior Nun)
Series: Many Little AUs for the Purpose of Exploding the Lilshotgun Tag [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905607
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28





	The Long Arc of History

The girl has all the mystery of an open wound. She’s raw, intense; Mary spotted the chip on her shoulder the minute she walked into the church basement. She’s seen Lilith’s type before: ride or die for the cause, but for all the wrong reasons. Lilith has been proving herself though, seems bent on it, so Mary lets it slide.

Mary is in a mood tonight. She had a brush with some cops earlier that could have ended badly because well, it’s Georgia and her odds are always questionable when dealing with the cops in Georgia. Especially for Mary, who is well known in local circles as a “troublemaker” — a black woman in 1965 who knows her worth and makes the outrageous demand that others acknowledge it too.

Lilith is at the table with several other people, most of them women, because the men in the movement get all the glory, but it’s mostly women who do the unglamorous work of organizing: long days in hot church basements, late evenings writing letters in someone’s sweltering living room.

“The police are going to be expecting us in Valdosta,” Lilith is saying. “Door to door isn’t going to work. They’re going to look for reasons to arrest us.”

“You afraid?” Mary challenges. She knows as she says it that she shouldn’t, that it’s her leftover anger from her unwarranted traffic stop. 

Lilith stares at her for a moment. “Frankly, yes. We all should approach this with some rational fear. They won’t like what we’re doing here, and they aren’t above warrantless arrests and worse.”

“You’re the whitest face in here,” Mary shoots back. “What have you got to worry about, going door to door?”

Lilith pulls off the unusual trick of being doe-eyed and dangerous at the same time. She gives Mary a blistering look. “My skin tone won’t be any protection if they know I’m registering Black folks to vote.” 

Before Mary can respond, Lilith sets down her notebook, gets up, and moves swiftly past Mary and out the door. “I need a cigarette,” she mutters as she walks past. 

The rest of the women at the table give Mary a look. She was a little harsh on Lilith. Wasn’t even Lilith’s fault, really. She sighs, and follows her outside. 

Lilith is there, in the church’s back lot, fumbling with a pack of filtered Luckies and a lighter that doesn’t seem to be cooperating. “I’ll be back when I’m done,” she says, her voice a little unsteady. 

Mary gets closer, and in the dark, she can see Lilith’s eyes are welled up with tears. Mary takes out a lighter, and offers Lilith a light.

“Thanks,” Lilith says curtly. Mary shields her lighter from the breezes with her hand, and a little tongue of flame leaps up. Lilith draws on her cigarette until the end glows orange, then releases a cloud of smoke along with a breath of relief.

When she showed up about six months ago, Mary had greeted her with suspicion. She still wonders why Lilith chose to cast her lot with them. 

Mary lights her own cigarette and listens to the crickets trilling from the nearby hedges. “Listen, I’m sorry I was little harsh with you back there. It wasn’t about you.” 

“It was though,” Lilith responds. She’s holding on to her composure, but Mary obviously hit a nerve. “You’ve never trusted me, and I don’t understand why.” 

Mary sighs. Lilith is such a prickly, wounded bird, she thinks. “I’m not the only one who wonders why you decided to get involved with us.” 

Lilith scoffs. “You think because I’m not Black, like you, that I’m the same as white, like them. But I’m not. I’m something else to them. I’m good enough for them to buy my father’s Italian leather, but not good enough to date their sons.” She looks at Mary, her big dark eyes full of a hurt and anger that all of sudden weighs down on Mary. 

That pain. That outsider feeling. Mary knows it. From multiple directions. “Do you even want to?” 

Lilith looks at her, frozen for a moment. “What do you mean?” 

“Do you want to date their sons?” 

Lilith casts her eyes to the ground. 

Mary decides to hazard a guess. “You’d rather date their daughters, right?” 

Lilith looks urgently at her. “How can you–?”

Mary touches her shoulder. “Sh. I know. I know how that is.” 

Lilith is a raw nerve. She draws on her cigarette as if it sustains her very life. The crickets make a ruckus, and the willows on the front lawn whisper like mad rumors. “Do they know?” she finally asks, gesturing with her cigarette to the people inside. 

“Hell no,” Mary says. “I’m a troublemaker, but I ain’t stupid.” 

Lilith breaks. She tosses her cigarette to the ground, and stands there, silently shaking, tears pouring down her face. “I don’t fit anywhere. No matter how hard I work, no matter what I do, I don’t belong,” she sobs. 

Against her better judgement, Mary puts her arms around Lilith. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, honey.” She lets Lilith weep on her shoulder, and gently rubs her back. “I’m not going to tell anyone.” 

Lilith shakes, with little spasms of weeping. “It’s not that. I just… nobody knows. Except you. And I can’t…” She breaks off.

Mary holds her. “It’s alright, honey. Nobody has to know except me and you, alright? Look, look…” She pulls back, tilts Lilith’s face up to look at her. “You fit somewhere now, alright? With me. You fit with me. We’re in a club. It may be a club of two at the moment, ‘cause this is small town Georgia, but we’re not the only ones in the world.” 

Lilith’s eyes are so vulnerable. Mary can see the aching to belong, the scars that isolation leaves when it’s been suffered for too long. It’s why she cast her lot with the movement; wanting to belong somewhere. Yes, justice and democracy and all of that too, but Lilith was breaking under a set of pressures that Mary hadn’t put together till just now. 

An impulse flits across Mary’s mind to kiss her; just a little, gentle, soft kiss to comfort her. A little something to make her feel less lonely, something to smooth the edges off the prickly night. But she thinks better of it. Not here, not now. It’s too much risk. She strokes Lilith’s cheek once, tries not to notice how her eyes close, how she tilts into that little touch. 

Mary tucks her hands behind her back. “So… why don’t you come back inside, and you can tell us what you have in mind instead of door to door canvassing, okay?” 

Lilith sniffles, nods. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. 

There are too many stops on the road, too many places to bend the arc of history toward justice, Mary thinks. She resigns herself to taking them one at a time.


End file.
